Effective Strategy?
Some questions to ponder...
Just ask yourselves:
Who owns this strategy?
If it is not used at Chief Executive level and senior management,
then who is using it? What are they using instead that
is more useful?
Have you got a strategy map?
Have you got your strategy on a page? Is it a clear picture?
Does it have a balance of perspectives? Does it represent
the (complementary and conflicting) themes of the strategy?
Is it on the walls? Do people talk about and use it?
Do you know where you are with it?
How far into the future are
you focused? Or are your focused on
diagnostic operational measures that tell you where you are
today?
Do you have a future planned
out? Is there
a clear future set out? How will you know you have got
there? Is it understood and agreed within the management
team? What assumptions does it make? How will you know
if they change?
What is your business model?
How does your strategy change the business
model for your customers? How does what you do change
the business model for your industry? Does your strategy
explain this clearly?
Strategy or tactics?
Are you measuring progress on your strategy
or short term initiatives? Where should your focus be?
Management team cohesion?
Do you all agree on the future? On the strategy?
Could you improve, so you leave the boardroom with the same
message and actions?
Are you Focused?
Snowed under with detail? Suffering with initiative overload?
It is the focus and discipline that we bring that helps you
deliver, better.
Is there clear cause and effect?
What are the critical drivers of the strategy?
How do the capabilities of the organisation translate into
financial value and a change for the customers? How will you
know they are having the right effect?
Is it linked to the finances
and budgets? Is the
strategy embedded in the budget? Are the operational
costs clear? What is the cost of implementing the strategy?
Who owns them? Who is responsible for delivering them?
Who gets sacked if they are not delivered?
Clear cost model? Is
there a clear model of how you will generate value in your
organisation, your strategy map, your scorecard and performance
management system?
Customer focus?
Are your customer objectives stated from their perspective,
or yours? Do you really understand what they want?
Where do you add value to them?
Measurement or Management?
Are you operating performance measurement
or management? If you could manage the organisation
better, what would it be worth?
Does everyone understand their
role? Is it clear to everyone what their
role in the strategy is? How would they know? How does
it affect them? What are their objectives and contribution?
Are behaviours, values and
culture represented? Do you set the objectives,
yet get frustrated with the culture. How much better would
it be, for you, if you could influence culture more directly?
Do you find out things are
going wrong early? Many organisations only
find out things are off course when the financial results
come in? You know that is too late.
Just think how much better you would be knowing things were
on track, or off track, well before then.
Focused investment?:
Are your projects delivering the strategy?
In one organisation we identified that, of the £100m
worth of projects in operation, 40% (£40m of cost) were
not supporting the strategy. What could you save?
Software or culture: Will the
software you implement change the culture or embed existing
practices? Many organisations think
software will solve their performance management
problems. But will it change the culture, or are you freezing
the existing culture in?
What opportunity could you be missing?
Do you learn from your strategy?
Organisations that learn from the strategy's execution, increase
people's understanding, and deliver results quicker and more
reliably. Such organisations achieve
performance around 25% better than their peers. Are
you?
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